It was a small limestone that weighed about a pound. Its rough surfaces, with edges blunted by years of exposure, were oxidized, darkening its original white, light beige, and cream colors to darker yellow, gray, and rust-brown patches. Besides its changing colors, the rock’s weight and vital signs remained constant. The stone did not know its parent rock. It faced forward when it broke off one night and rolled down the hill into the valley.
In summer, ants scurried over and around it, carrying seeds, insect eggs, struggling aphids, and shredded leaves. Occasional black beatles wondered by, doing their best to avoid the ants. Sea squills signaled the beginning of autumn. Every few hundred years, a sea squill seed, carried in the wind, landed close by and developed into a bulb. A squill grew a stalk that towered above the rock. Flowers bloomed just before the rains. Lying at the base of the stem, looking up, the clump of flowers looked like the sky needle, but the rock didn’t know that. The stone grew fond of its squill, which showed up every year and stayed for a few months, but avoided getting too close because squill buds only lasted thirty to forty years.
It rained most years, but winters were mild. Sometimes, the ground was wet enough for earthworms to borrow through the moist earth underneath. There were nights when worm couples came to the surface to mate in the moonlight. Touched by these tender moments, the rock hoped the worms would regain composure and crawl back into the ground before sunrise. It had seen couples that let their emotions get the best of them, cuddled, rolled over, fell asleep on the surface, and did not wake up before the ants woke up. In winter evenings, the rock enjoyed watching starling murmuration over the hills before they settled in the trees for the night. A little rain was enough for mustard and thistles to flower in spring. In wetter years, the valley floor was covered with poppies, anemones, and lupins. Cyclamen preferred shaded rock crevasses under the trees on the foothills surrounding the valley. Summers were not too hot; passing geckos stopped atop it to suck up its warmth, and snakes and scorpions ignored it. By autumn’s end, the flowers were gone, and the thistles withered into dry stalks. Life moved slowly and peacefully for tens of thousands of years.
Things picked up when people arrived with their sheep, goats, and annoying chickens. They sometimes pitched tents in the valley and stayed for a few weeks before moving on. People built fires and used to sit around them, vocalize, and exchange gestures. From where the rock lay, it looked like people repeated themselves. They often pointed to the sky and made wide arching motions with their hands, pointing at planets, mistaking them for stars. Daylight conversations were similar as people watched their herds and developed the flawed geocentric theory of the sun’s motion. When someone picked up a turtle and balanced a flat rock on its shell, the rock understood how failable people were. The rock had not given the turtles passing over it much thought. Only now did it become evident that people’s notion of turtles-all-the-way-down was hopelessly flawed. The rock became concerned that people were rushing to misconceptions about the world. Misconceptions were likely inconsistent, and inconsistencies could lead to disagreements and violence. The idea that violence could erupt over abstract concepts was troubling. As the rock became more sentient, it struggled to reconcile its understanding with its helplessness. Was it destined to accept the chaos that people were sure to bring? Could it be that its sole purpose was to have none?
Then, it did not rain for three years, and the herders were last seen heading west. The rock did not go anywhere; it took four hundred years before the people returned to work on its self-esteem. When the people came back, there were many more of them. Apparently, they learned construction wherever they were because they built a town on a nearby hill from stones and mud. The rock was too small to use, so a builder cleared it into a streambed. Shepherds moved to the hillsides, and farmers cultivated the soil in the valley to grow more food. Three times a year, like clockwork, they organized caravans, grabbed some livestock and chicken soup, headed east, and returned a week later with some of their livestock missing. On occasions, usually at the end of spring, men would lay down their plowshares and pruning hooks, gather with their swords and javelins, and head beyond the hills. At times, they returned with spoils of war, and at times, those who returned had only their cloaks and sandals. The rock enjoyed its new location, manicured and polished by water and silt. It became so well-rounded it felt good about itself, ready for the next phase in its career.
During a warm summer night, the rock felt the ground trembling under thousands of footsteps marching from the west. When the marching stopped, the rock could hear voices speaking a language it had not heard before, crackling of bonfires, sounds of blacksmith hammers, weapons clanking, clattering utensils, mules neighing, and livestock bleating. It sounded like an army was settling in for the night. In the early morning hours, the ground trembled again as an army approached from the east but did not stop to make camp. Its footsteps stopped a stone’s throw away from where the rock lay. The army from the west fell into formation to face them. The rock was lying on its back when it heard footsteps coming closer. A shadow covered it, and a man picked it up and put it in a leather pouch he carried along with four other stones of similar size and shape. He rose and stepped from the streambed onto the flat ground, walked a few steps, put his hand into the pouch, pulled out the rock, fit it into his sling, and began to swing. The rock could see the army to the west, the brown curls of the man with the sling, the army to the west, the army to the east, north, west, south, east; the rock circled the man’s head one more time and the sling released. The rock was settling into its trajectory, enjoying the view, when a forehead appeared in its flight path.

Three thousand years later, the rock still lies by the side of the road passing through the Elah Valley, watching marchers carrying flags heading east. Cars passing the marchers honk their horns in support, and others scream and make obscene gestures. The rock has seen this before.